Introduction by Metal Slime 

This variation of Zeon mass produced MS-06 is based on ground type (MS-06J). These were designated to use in the African front line during OYW.
There are a lot of custom variations in used. This particular unit belong to Rommel troops which equipped with sand filter, 230mm. rocket launcher, 120 mm. machine gun, cracker pod and jet ski.

The Project

Hmmm, where can I begin? This one start humbly enough back when I began fiddling around with the ZZ's Desert Zaku kit with no fancy stuff planned or anything. However, over the yeas, it slowly grew into something else entirely. At first it was only to be added some ball joints, then I obtained this Zaku F2 GK that does not look too hot but has some cool parts in it, so I decided to steal parts from. And then all the daydreamings finally manifested when Bandai released the MS-06F/J from 08th serie. I immediately buy 3 boxes of that, despite not too fond on the design.

I must have spent like, more than 3 years on this thing! Although most of those time, it just sat on the back burner. Of the few occasions that I actually put it on the work bench, most of the time was spent starring at the kit trying to decide how to deal with each parts.

Construction

Non of the stock joint structures made it to this final rendition. I ended up redo every movable part from scratch. The based kit (MS-06D from ZZ) has a very primitive inner structure dating from the MSV era.

• Head: Taken from 08th team's MS-06 F/J kit. I modified it to have a movable mono-eye. Roughly the same method that is used on my Gouf Custom is employed. Using a light crystal on an 8mm clear plastic pipe as a base with poly-cap inside. Also same with the Gouf is the application of the twin vulcans on the head.
  
  The antenna base is made from plastic sheet, with a photo-etch part applied in the front.
  
• Body: I keep the upper half of the body (but not sawed off the lower), while discarded the inner skeleton frame. The lower half of the body from Zaku F2 GK is then glued together with this, and touched up with polyester putty. After that the kit's cockpit hatch is laid across the 2 pieces.
  
• Arms: Again, taken from GK, but it was fixed-pose thing, so I modified it to be poseable (see page2). Both shoulder armors were modified with better joints plus detailings.
  
• Legs: Between the upper leg from 06F/J and the lower leg of 06D, I cover the joint with a tissue paper as a seal. The foot, although sporting a space type foot print pattern with burner, seems to be suitable for a unit with hover craft flight system. To mouth the foot, I make use of pla-pipe as a structure anchored with the platform the support knee joint, downward to a ball joint that hold the foot.

Details

After the basic constructing is done, I spruced it up with rivets on the chest, shoulder armor, head, and weapons. Also on the chest, 4 minus molds replaced the old circular panel line pattern.

All the cables is springs with size of 2mm for the head, 2.5mm around the waist and 3mm into the legs.

As for the hover in the leg, I cut opened what was originally a plastic pattern and paste a mesh sheet on instead on both front and back (see pic).

Painting

This is a fun project to paint, since I love the military scheme but rarely have the chance to do it. The main color is primarily Gunze's sandy brown (#19) mixed with white. Sadly Gunze seems to discontinued this color in their latest catalog, since I used this particular color ather often. For the body, I used red brown and mahogany. Lastly, the green part is black green (I think). After each major part is colored, I shaded it with darker tone as usual and then overspray to keep the overall tone in check.

As with most of my models, non of the paint is used right out of the bottle without alteration, but you get the idea how it's roughly formed.

Weathering

For the majority of wash, I used a raw umber oil paint without mixing any solvent. This also one of the rather few occasions I used pastel all over the place. Of course, I do love pastel, but to apply it with all those space-based MS seems somehow a little inappropriate.